


Future

by Teyke



Series: Cap-IM Tiny Reverse Bang ficlets [2]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Iron Man (Comic), Marvel Noir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Iron Man Noir - Freeform, Man Out of Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hundred years ago, Steve was chronicler for MARVELS magazine. The future might be a bigger adventure than he's prepared for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [HEROIC](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/139131) by fictionforlife (ireallyshouldbedrawing). 



> Please check out [ireallyshouldbedrawing](http://ireallyshouldbedrawing.tumblr.com/)'s amazingly pretty art before you read this fic! 
> 
> This fic also fills the 'future' square on my bingo card.

The Stark Needle rises two miles – no, _kilometres,_ Steve corrects in his head, nobody in this new century uses miles anymore – above the old streets of New York, higher than any of the other skyscrapers. Steve watched the Empire State go up, and he thought it was a marvel then, but today’s skyscrapers make it seem a toy building. The Stark Needle soars above them all, and widens again at the very top to form larger floors, platforms in the clouds. But today is clear, and the view is like no other.

“Quite a sight, huh?” Stark – the new Stark, Tony – asks, hands in his pockets. Steve pulls back from the glass, and sees with embarrassment that he’s left fingerprints against it. He searches in his pocket for a hanker-chief before he remembers that he doesn’t have one – no one does, now.

“Climbed a lot of mountains,” said Steve, and his heart gives that funny twist again, which isn’t the murmur or the asthma or anything else. “But this might take the cake. I look down, I wonder that the air’s not thinner.”

Tony snorts a laugh. “It is, actually, but we keep it pressurized. Standard regulations, these days, it’s bad for health to be going from higher-to-lower pressure like that day in day out.” He steps up closer to the glass and gestures out at the other skyscrapers, some of which reach up to one-and-a-half kilometres. Around them flying cars wind in and out in perfectly organized chaos, none of them ever colliding, even though sometimes it seems like they should. Steve remembers cab drivers cursing at pedestrians and bicycles, accents thick but anger unmistakable. On the ride up here, there’d been no driver; Tony had told him it was ‘auto-pilot’.

The old city lies below it all, and when Steve looks too far down, rather than out, it becomes alien. The views aren’t the same as they are on the ground. With effort, he can see buildings he knows, but he doesn’t quite recognize them.

“You’ll adapt,” says Tony suddenly, quietly, and Steve startles, turns to him with something like accusation. For a moment he can’t quite speak, everything he’s ignoring clogging his throat, and Tony takes the opportunity to speak over him, cool and calm. “Come on, you went chasing down alien artefacts with great-granddad, you can’t tell me none of those were stranger than this. Let alone that old armour of his, good lord.”

Steve wants to bridle at the clumsy attempt at reassurance, but the fondness with which Tony speaks of his ancestor’s flying armour, so much in the manner of the man who’d designed and worn it, drains it away. Tony is not his great-grandfather. But the way he speaks, confident – the way he sticks his hands in his pockets, or takes them out to gesture expansively, the way he’s proudly shown off this strange new future to Steve – he’s _so much_ like his namesake that Steve says, instead, “That was on adventure. Bit different coming home.”

“I know,” says Tony. “But you can do it.”

The elder Stark hadn’t had that much unswerving faith in him, not right off the bat. That Tony had been skeptical, until Steve had proven himself, and his trust had been hard-won. It doesn’t feel right, accepting it so easily from this new Stark.

“He never stopped looking for you,” says Tony. He’s watching Steve more intently, now, jokes about outdated, marvellous armour gone.

Steve frowns, eyebrows pulling together. “That was stupid. He’d no reason to think I’d survived.” When the Nazis pursuing them had set off one of the temple traps, the artefact Steve had just finagled from its pedestal had glowed blue, then brilliant, brilliant white, brighter than any explosion. Then there’d been water everywhere, and he’d been unable to breathe... until a sleek, impossibly man-sized crimson-and-gold armour had pulled him from the water, and suddenly he was gasping for breath in the grip of the worst asthma attack he’d had in years.

In a century, it turned out.

Tony had been in his armour at the time, to force the temple doors open; the last thing Steve had seen was him being blown clear of the light, while the Nazis seemed to disintegrate. Steve had been sure he’d died himself, for a while.

“He had faith in you,” says Tony. His hands are back in his pockets. “Never could believe you’d die like that, said it was fishy and you were way too stubborn anyway. It’s in his journals. And if he thought that about you after dragging across the world and back – ”

“Hey, sometimes I dragged him,” Steve points out, reflexively.

Tony grins. “There you go. You’ll adapt. And you know... I think you’ll find, the future’s pretty amazing, too.”

Steve looks out again, and chases that feeling he’d had on first seeing this view. Look _out_ , not down. The sun’s setting; it lines up through the needle-like skyscrapers below and the light refracts through their enormous glass windows, across their intermittent observation platforms, setting everything gold and orange and red. He pictures all the people in those flying cars, science fiction come to life – and here he is, living it. Just one more adventure, bigger than any before.

“I guess I’ll find out,” says Steve, and it feels more hopeful than he’d expected.

 


End file.
